Fisheries Committee on May 1st, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 65 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. This meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of June 23, 2022.

I remind you all to please address your comments through the chair. Taking screenshots or photos of your screen is not permitted. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website.

In accordance with the committee's routine motion concerning connection tests for witnesses, I am informing the committee that all witnesses have completed the required connection tests in advance of the meeting.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted on January 18, 2022, the committee is resuming its study of the ecosystem impacts and management of pinniped populations.

I would like to welcome our first panel of witnesses.

Representing the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia, we have Carl Walters, professor emeritus, via video conference. Representing the Institute of Marine Research, we have Tore Haug, scientist emeritus, via video conference. Representing Maritime Seal Management Inc., we have Daniel Lane, professor, via video conference.

Thank you for taking the time to appear today. You will each have up to five minutes for an opening statement.

We will go to Dr. Walters first, for five minutes or less.

[Dr. Carl Walters, Professor Emeritus, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia, As an Individual]

Thank you.

I have been studying salmon populations, dynamics and ecosystem changes on the Pacific coast for about 50 years. A few years ago, I was approached by the Pacific Balance Pinniped Society—people you've had as witnesses—and asked to write a proposal for commercial seal harvesting on the west coast, with the primary purpose being to reduce seal abundance and increase salmon populations.

I would like to make a few general points, and you can raise other things during questions and answers.

The first point is that there are probably at least twice as many seals and Steller's sea lions on the B.C. coast today than there have been for the last several thousand years, because first nations people harvested them intensively before white men arrived on the coast. That kept the numbers down quite a bit. Sea lions, in particular, now consume more fish than all the commercial fisheries combined—mostly hake and herring, but also salmon. They eat over 300,000 tonnes of fish per year. Seal and sea lion increases since 1970 have been correlated with increasing mortality rates, particularly among chinook and coho salmon on the B.C. south coast and herring populations on the outside north coast.

We're not talking about a new problem associated with recent climate change. The Georgia Strait chinook and coho fishery, one of the most valuable fisheries in B.C., started to collapse during the 1980s. That collapse was not stopped or reversed by harvest rate restrictions imposed by John Fraser when he was the minister of fisheries, or even by the more severe harvest restrictions David Anderson imposed during the 1990s, when he demanded putting conservation first and made major salmon commercial fishery close along the coast.

The Pacific Balance Pinniped Society proposal is based largely on the idea of reducing pinniped populations by about 50% to the level where they are most productive to sustain harvest. Recalculating a sustainable harvest would result in an income of at least $1.5 million per year for the people who do the harvesting.

That proposal has banged around in DFO over the last several years. Their main excuse for not proceeding was a lack of demonstration that the fishery would be economically viable, but they won't allow any harvesting to try to sell the animals in order to see how to develop markets for them. DFO has consistently ignored seal and sea lion impacts in their policy planning and failed to even approve test commercial harvests. First nations people can now get permits to kill seals, but only for food and ceremonial purposes. Just removing that food and ceremonial restriction on the sale from their permits would lead to the needed harvesting and marketing tests.

Pinniped reduction is not certain to result in salmon stock increases, because of issues such as whether the salmon killed by seals and sea lions are largely ones that would have died anyway due to diseases and other factors.

The seal reduction policy or harvest development policy is what we call an “adaptive management” experiment. It has reasonably good odds of success. Andrew Trites told you the odds are only 30%. I don't know where he got that number. There's no science to back that up. My personal assessment would be that the odds of a successful outcome, on the salmon side, is at least 50%.

That concludes my opening comments.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you.

We'll now go to Dr. Haug for five minutes or less, please.

[Dr. Tore Haug, Scientist Emeritus, Institute of Marine Research]

Thank you.

It is a main principle in Norwegian management of seals and whales that no stock can be hunted without updated information about abundance.

The walrus has been protected in our area since 1952, while ringed seals, bearded seals, harbour seals and grey seals are hunted in a very small game hunt. Norwegian commercial sealing has always been based on harp seals in the Greenland Sea and the southeastern Barents Sea and on hooded seals in the Greenland Sea.

Results from the most recent pup survey in 2022 suggest that current Greenland Sea hooded seal pup production remains at a very low level, which is now less than 10% of the level in 1946. Following the implemented precautionary harvest strategy, the advice suggests that no harvest be allowed. This stock has been protected since 2007.

The 2022 pup production estimate for Greenland Sea harp seals is similar to previous survey estimates from 1991 to 2018, and the stock probably counts some 500,000 to 600,000 animals. It is still harvested commercially at a very low scale. From numbers taken in 2022, there were only 1,400 animals.

Recent Russian aerial surveys of the White Sea and Barents Sea harp seal stock suggest that there may have been a sudden reduction in pup production after 2003. Nevertheless, the stock still counts around 1.5 million animals, and there is a current small Norwegian hunt. The Russians haven't hunted in this area since 2008.

It is well known that the population dynamics of harp seals have been influenced by commercial hunts, which resulted in significant declines after World War II. However, lower catches and improved management have lessened the influence of hunting. Today, the removals in the west and east ice areas where we hunt are way below the scientific advice for sustainable harvest.

In a recent study of prey consumption by the marine mammal community in our areas—that means both seals and whales—we assessed that marine mammals remove an annual amount of 25 million tonnes of prey per year. As a comparison, the removal by fisheries is only a little over four million tonnes per year in the same areas.

Along with cod and minke whales, harp seals are the main top predators in the Barents Sea ecosystem. In the decade leading up to 2015, the abundance of cod increased to record high levels. In spite of this, the growth and condition of individual cod have remained rather stable. However, the body condition—the blubber thickness—of harp seals and minke whales has decreased. A possible hypothesis for explaining this is that cod in fact outperform marine mammal stocks in the competition for food in our area.

Finally, climate change is a challenge for several pinniped populations. With the assumed and observed reductions in ice cover, pagophilic seal species such as harp and hooded seals will experience marked breeding habitat loss in traditional breeding areas and will certainly undergo distributional changes and presumably also abundance reductions, with subsequent consequences for traditional harvest.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Dr. Haug.

We'll now go to Dr. Lane for five minutes or less, please.

[Dr. Daniel Lane, Professor, Maritime Seal Management Inc.]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm in Petit-de-Grat, Cape Breton, and I acknowledge this as Unama'ki, the traditional territory of the Mi'kmaq people.

Mr. Chair and committee members, I pose three questions related to your mandate. First, do seals' impacts imply that DFO inaction is complicit in our documented inability to violate their conservation and biodiversity mandates? Second, is there market potential for seal products despite closed markets in some cases? Third, why does Canada not support active management?

Committee member Mr. Perkins acknowledged the 2012 DFO recommendation to remove 73,000 grey seals from the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Committee members are also aware that there has been no such action on these seals.

Marine science is notoriously uncertain, as Dr. Walters noted, yet 15 years ago, DFO scientists declared the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence Atlantic cod stock “certain to be extirpated...within 40 years with no fishery”. In 2019, in the latest stock assessment, they declared, “this cod population is expected to continue to decline toward extinction.”

DFO scientists' descriptions of seal impacts that lead for certain to extirpation and extinction are shocking and disturbing, so I'll ask this: Does inaction violate the Fisheries Act of Canada and our international commitment to the convention on biodiversity? Can this committee effectively communicate Canadian legal obligations to the cabinet table so we can act?

The committee has heard resounding evidence that markets are clearly not a deterrent to action. Socio-economic benefits and human health products oblige Canada to develop an industry and supply markets for worldwide consumption.

You've heard about the online education and outreach in the impressive work of the Seals and Sealing Network. Dion Dakins, a previous witness, commented on the global demand for omega-3 seal oil. I also mentioned the ongoing work of Perennia in Nova Scotia around analysis of seal meat for the valuable raw foods for pets market and their interest in acquiring available capacity to do this work in Nova Scotia.

Engaging Export Development Canada and extending CMAPS to support nationwide sealing and worldwide market access are required.

Dr. Walters—I'm happy he's here with us today—said this in response to west coast impacts and science uncertainties at the December Senate committee meetings related to seals:

Maybe the question you need to ask is how to proceed. What is the best recommendation you can make concerning the development of marine mammal harvesting systems, given the information you have now, in terms of the potential value of those marine mammal harvests as fisheries in their own right and also the benefits that they may have for some fish stocks?

Important evidence in your committee meetings spoke of action planning and action teams. I acknowledge the points of my MP, Mr. Kelloway, in this regard as well as Madam Desbiens's comment to Gil Thériault to develop seal product marketing in the Maggies. That's all good.

Action on seals must be industry-focused and supported nationally, not just by DFO, as the FRCC has recommended since 1998. This has to be done in a manner that is ecologically sustainable, economically viable, socially stable and administratively efficient.

We know how to do this. Nova Scotia's highly successful lobster sector, Canada's most valuable commercial fishery, provides the model template: local harvesting operations, centralized exporters maintaining secure markets, and a global customer base that trusts our exporters to provide timely, valued, certified and quality products.

Seals also provide an opportunity to redefine how Canada manages in marine ecosystems. We need a new DFO, not a paternal regulator managing pirates, but an auditor who sets the basic rules, oversees the industry to meet and report on stated objectives and incentivizes industry to plan for sustainability and operate strategically.

A local seal company should be required to compete with and conform to bids for a formal request for proposal that includes requirements to achieve prespecified objectives. Past committees have recommended all of the characteristics of a seals business or action plan: sustainable harvests over a strategic planning period; defined ethical harvesting and processing methods, including additional support to build new harvesting capacity; trained, professional seal harvesters and partners from indigenous communities; harvesters deputized as scientist observers of the marine ecosystem; and full disclosure of operations through regular consultations with the local community as shareholders, and with the ENGOs, of course, as transparency towards ecosystem sustainability, socio-economic viability and management efficiency.

We have an opportunity to take action that embraces local, sustainable, value-added consequences. I fear it is now too late for Atlantic cod, but if we continue to do nothing, then we all should consider ourselves complicit.

Thank you for your attention, and good luck with your report writing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Dr. Lane.

We'll now go to our first round of questioning.

We'll start off with Mr. Arnold for six minutes or less, please.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank all of the witnesses for being here. I'll start off with Mr. Walters.

Mr. Walters, we've heard that some top scientific studies have provided conclusive evidence that 30% to 50% of outbound chinook, coho and steelhead smolts are consumed in the Salish Sea upon their arrival in the migration up the gulf. If the pinniped population were reduced, in your opinion, what would the impact be on small predation levels? Would they be reduced proportionately?

[Dr. Carl Walters]

We calculate that the predation rates would be reduced by about 50% if the seal numbers were reduced by 50% in the Georgia Strait. That wouldn't allow a complete recovery of the fishery to its 1970 levels. However, it would build up enough to attract a substantial increase in the sport fishing effort, which would have substantial economic benefits to small communities around the Georgia Strait.

The proposal is not to fully rebuild the salmon stocks.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Are there other species that would also benefit from this management regime?

[Dr. Carl Walters]

If the harvest regime included Steller's sea lions, which are currently protected, we think it would have a substantial benefit to the herring fishery, particularly on the west coast of Vancouver Island and up in Haida Gwaii. The fisheries in those areas for herring have been closed for almost 20 years now because of very low survival rates and very high natural mortality rates in the herring, which we calculate is largely due to the Steller's sea lion. Those fisheries would be at least partially restored and made more resilient.

Steller's sea lions can exert what is called depensatory mortality. When they eat a certain amount of herring, it doesn't mean anything if the herring population is large; it's a small percentage of the population that has been eaten. However, when a herring stock gets reduced when they have poor recruitment or something, that same Steller's sea lion consumption has a much bigger impact on them. The Steller's sea lion is a continued threat driving herring populations down to low levels for long periods of time.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Are all of the pinniped species on B.C.'s west coast native or indigenous to the area, or have some of them moved into B.C.'s west coast from other areas?

[Dr. Carl Walters]

They're indigenous. They're found in the middens of first nations people up and down the coast going back as far as middens can be examined.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Is that all species of pinnipeds?

[Dr. Carl Walters]

When first nations people first invaded B.C. at the end of the Pleistocene, they did so not as fishing people but as hunting people. They never lost those hunting traditions.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you.

We're going to hear from officials to wrap up this study, and we're probably going to hear that they're working to ensure that seal populations remain above a precautionary population level, not that they operate in a management system to reduce populations of any species. Should that management regime change from managing only to keep species above a minimum level? Should it also take into consideration a maximum healthy ecosystem level?

[Dr. Carl Walters]

Is that a question for me?

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Yes.

[Dr. Carl Walters]

Like other mammal populations, they produce the largest annual surplus that can be harvested on a sustained basis when they're reduced to something around half of the level they achieve when they're not harvested. If we calculate that, it means if the seal population was reduced by about 50% and then kept near that level, it would produce the largest annual surplus. The pup survival rate would improve considerably.

As the seal population built up on the B.C. coast, the survival rate of pups through their first year of life dropped from about 80% down to around 30%. Starving seal pups wash up on shore and so on, so it's not what you would call a healthy situation from that standpoint for the seal population to be as large as it is.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

I'll quickly switch to Mr. Haug, if I could.

Mr. Haug, I'm looking at a chart of cod stocks in Norway and how they've recovered after a seal invasion. It appears that something happened to that seal population where the cod stocks have now rebounded to their highest levels ever.

Can you elaborate on what has taken place there to allow those cod stocks to recover?

[Dr. Tore Haug]

It's a good question. We have seen that the cod stock increased tremendously after the year 2000 and up to 2015. Now it is reducing again. Of course, the answer for why this happens is much more complicated than relating it just to seals. It also has to do with good and bad year classes of the cod.

What we have seen primarily in our area is that there has been a severe reduction in the hunting of harp seals in the west ice and east ice, so one should expect that these populations have grown. We haven't seen very clear signs of that. We have, in fact, seen some reduction in pup production, especially in the White Sea population.

We don't see very many harp seals feeding on cod, but we think there is some sort of competition between cod and seals, and also with whales. In the Barents Sea area, cod, harp seals and minke whales are the prime top predators. I think they are more competitors than predators of each other.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you. We've gone a bit over time, but we didn't want to interrupt the answer.

We'll now go to Mr. Hardie for six minutes or less, please.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for attending our session today.

We'll go back to you, Mr. Haug. Norway harvests both seals and whales; is that correct?

[Dr. Tore Haug]

That is correct, yes.